Northeast Texas Community College Professor of Theatre and Speech, Douglas Hoppock, was recently named an Alumni Ambassador by Texas A&M University-Commerce for the 2013 Alumni Ambassador Forum.

Each year, departments at A&M-Commerce choose former students return to campus for this event. It is the highest honor a department can bestow upon its alumni. Hoppock received his MA degree from the university in 1974, where he majored in theatre and minored in speech.

In his invitation e-mail, Jim Anderson, A&M-Commerce Playwright in Residence and Senior Lecturer in Mass Media Communication and Theatre, remarked of Hoppock: “You were nominated because of your many years in educational theatre, and because of all the well-trained and talented students whom you taught, that transferred here. They always refer to you as ‘Poppa.’”

A native Texan, born and raised in Temple, Hoppock has been a college educator of Theatre and Speech for the past 38 years. He has more than 150 college theatre productions to his directing, scene design and lighting design credit. He has worked as a professional actor and stage manager with Casa Manana Summer Musicals in Fort Worth, Texas where he earned his Actors Equity membership. He has also worked as an actor with the Moscow Repertory Theatre Company in Moscow, Idaho and as an actor and director with the Roof Garden Dinner Theatre in Cisco, Texas.

Hoppock has been honored with numerous teaching and community service awards, including multiple designations as a “Who’s Who Among Teachers of American Colleges,” a two-time Minnie Piper Stephens Professor nominee at NTCC, named an “Outstanding Young Man of America,” and a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from Theatre Northeast Alumni Association. Douglas is married to his wife Sherry. Hobbies that they enjoy together are reading, writing, hiking, and traveling. He is exceptionally proud of his current and former students, many of whom have excelled as professionals in theatre and in theatre education.

Theatre Northeast is producing Inherit The Wind April 25-28 at the Whatley Center for the Performing Arts. The show is directed by Hoppock and he will also play the part of Henry Drummond. For more information about theatre at NTCC, visit www.ntcc.edu or www.ntcc.edu/whatley for details about upcoming theatre productions.